Callan Park deserves a better vision, but the right one

February 17, 2019 — 12.05am

Children play at Callan Park.Credit:Dallas Kilponen

For more than a century (1873-2008), few Sydneysiders would have grown up without some conception of Callan Park. Initially "a hospital for the insane", then "mental hospital", eventually the very name Callan Park itself connoted poor treatment of the mentally ill. It ended its medical working life as part of a merged Rozelle Hospital before patients were moved to Concord Hospital.

It now sits in limbo land between a hideous past and a bright future. Six kilometres from the CBD on 150 hectares at Iron Cove, Lilyfield, Callan Park is among some of Sydney's most glorious waterfront land and has the potential to be the Centennial Park of the inner west.

As governments dither over its future, the park's heritage listing has not saved its sandstone buildings and magnificent gardens from the depredations of neglect. Some buildings have been abandoned, but the Kirkbride complex has been maintained by the University of Sydney's College of the Arts. The college is due to leave that site next year.

Last week NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley raised the spectre of commercialisation when he announced a plan to create a $5 million trust to restore the site's dilapidated buildings.

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Mr Daley said a Labor government would spend $10 million – $5 million on a public trust and $5 million for the trust to fund repairs and restorations. However, he also said he would be open to allowing cafes and restaurants to operate on the sprawling grounds, which is currently illegal under the Callan Park Act. The act protects the site from commercialisation, over-development and privatisation.

Labor, in opening the door to such mixed development, has failed to please the purists. The community group Friends of Callan Park warned that changing the act governing the park would be "extremely dangerous" because giving businesses and developers access to the park would "ruin it".

"If Labor is open to changing the act, then how can we stop the Liberals? It's an invite to the Liberals to pursue commercialisation," Friends president Hal Greenland said.

The Berejiklian government will now be under pressure to respond to Labor's plan. It may be too cynical to say the inner west is such barren territory for conservative governments that there is little incentive for them to give this area much. The government has offered soothing words about the Office of Environment and Heritage framing a "landscape structure plan" to guide decisions about the park's future, but provided few concrete details. (For instance: "This plan will set out a conceptual vision for the site and identify opportunities to improve the park's open space while retaining its significant heritage values.")

Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton last week spoke of "a thorough and properly costed plan of management for Callan Park that will deliver more for the community".

The Inner West Council has attempted to organise a skate park and public swimming area at the park. Such ideas are worth considering. Earlier this month Courtney Barnett and Gang of Youths topped the bill of a successful Laneway Festival held in the park's grounds.

The public remains sceptical of governments which allow protected sites to fall into such disrepair that the only solution is ugly / visionary (choose your own adjective) redevelopment. Callan Park faces the prospect of what Darcy Byrne, the mayor of Inner West Council, calls "demolition by neglect". This shouldn't be the final chapter in the park's extraordinary history.

Callan Park is a place of great symbolism. There, some of our most vulnerable people were treated by the rights of the time, but in ways that horrify us today. But it is also part of Sydney's glorious natural heritage, and could become the inner west's own version of Centennial Park. It deserves better, let's get the vision right.